Ultrasound Research Platforms

For many years, the ‘closed’ architecture of clinical scanners has made difficult, or impossible, their use for the implementation and test of new imaging methods. To overcome this problem, open platforms, that is, highly flexible scanners with wide access to raw echo data, have been developed and are now increasingly used in ultrasound research laboratories. In this chapter, the characteristics of an ideal research platform are reviewed and compared to those of available open systems. After describing the architectures of two reference scanners with opposite features in terms of complexity, size, and cost, several examples of novel applications, which have been made feasible by the research platforms, are discussed.